Report from the international permafrost association: A new strategy and structure for the international permafrost association

In this biannual report to readers of Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, we present the strategy of the International Permafrost Association (IPA) as approved by the IPA Council at the Third European Conference on Permafrost in June 2010. We also describe IPA's action plans for 2010–16 based on this new strategy. When the IPA was started by a group of scientists and engineers in Fairbanks, USA in 1983, permafrost research was a focused field with researchers concentrated in a limited number of countries. Since then, permafrost research has grown considerably in size and scope, with the involvement of an increasing number of countries and specialities. A rapid analysis of publications related to permafrost and periglacial processes shows that the number of published articles increased by an order of magnitude between the early 1970 s and 2010 (Figure 1), with most of that change after 1983. Over that time, the IPA grew from an association largely concerned with the organisation of international conferences to one producing reference publications (maps, manuals, handbooks, etc.), organising meetings at two-year intervals (regional and international conferences on permafrost), initiating international studies, such as the Carbon Pools in Permafrost Regions, Arctic Coastal Dynamics, and Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic Permafrost, Soils and Periglacial Environments projects, and, most importantly, operating observing networks sponsored by the United Nations-supported global observing systems, namely the Thermal State of Permafrost and the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring, both parts of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P). Number of indexed articles in Web of Science per year for articles with at least one of the following terms in the title: permafrost, frozen ground, periglacial, thermokarst, rockglacier, cryopeg, talik, cryolithology, cryoturbation, ice wedge, mud boil, frost heave, frost mound, ground ice, solifluction, geocryology, palsa, retrogressive thaw slump, pingo, oriented lake, segregated ice, sorted circle, cryosol, thaw settlement. Note: This analysis does not capture all articles relating to the subject matter since it is based only on journals indexed in the Web of Science. The need for the IPA to remain the pre-eminent voice in the scientific community on permafrost and permafrost-related issues, when other groups are becoming increasingly interested in questions concerning the impact of climate change on perennially frozen ground. The need to respond rapidly and frequently to enquiries from other scientific organisations and the media with accurate and up-to-date information. The desire to meet demands to financially support the activities of Task Forces and Working Groups, which are regarded as central to the IPA in the periods between international conferences on permafrost. The pre-eminent use of the internet to search for information in general, and the ability of the web to make information and data available at low cost, in contrast to the IPA's use of paper for many of its publications. The contrast between expanded requests for activities within the IPA while the organisation's capacity for action has been fixed because revenues have been essentially constant. The success of the Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) with more than 800 individual members (Bonnaventure et al., 2009) and the consequent opportunity and need for the IPA to involve these members in the organisation. The financial vulnerability of the IPA as an organisation due to its dependence on external funding for the Secretariat (currently funded by the Alfred Wegener Institute; and in the past by the Norwegian Research Council, the Canadian National Research Council and the US National Science Foundation) with a level of sponsorship that easily exceeds the entire annual member dues. In the face of these growing challenges, the Executive Committee (EC) of the IPA initiated a revision of the IPA structures in 2009–10. The EC consulted with external polar science experts and Council members and developed a strategy document with recommendations for the period 2010–16. These recommendations were discussed and approved by the IPA Council in June 2010 and the necessary revisions to the IPA Constitution and Bylaws were made. Here, we present the major changes and highlight their role in strengthening the organisation. The most important changes introduced in 2010 relate to the structure of the association. First, the Secretariat of the IPA was strengthened to take on more responsibilities in the management of the association and the title of Secretariat Leader was changed to Executive Director. Second, the association decided to dedicate a larger part of its funds to newly established Action Groups. These groups will be able to request up to 2500 Euros per year, will have limited terms and must focus on the production of clearly defined research outputs. An application process for funding will be announced during spring 2011 through the Permalist mailing list. A consequence of the formation of Action Groups is the transformation of Working Groups into Interest Groups. These groups will retain the same mandate as their predecessor Working Groups, and will be eligible to form Action Groups to fund targeted initiatives. They will have to select a PYRN member as co-chair. A new category of membership entitled ‘individual membership’ has been created. This category does not provide voting rights at Council, but entitles the members to several advantages listed on the IPA website. Individual members are encouraged to make a donation to support the organisation, thus providing an additional revenue stream. The Standing Committee on Data, Information and Communication will now focus on data management only, and will have an oversight role in relation to the GTN-P. A separate Standing Committee on Education and Outreach will progressively be put in place and will be operational in 2012. An important outcome of the changes is the upgrading of the national committees. The establishment of individual memberships enables national representatives to easily contact their members, develop mailing lists, and organise and structure their community. Although the larger countries in the IPA could already do this, many of the smaller ones could not. The production and printing of Frozen Ground constituted around 80 per cent of the expenses of the IPA in some years, and the Council decided to shift these resources to targeted actions and to transform Frozen Ground into a shorter and entirely electronic product (see http://ipa.arcticportal.org/publications/frozen-ground.html). Country reports will now be available online in a newly formatted interface, and will be easy to reference in online databases (http://ipa.arcticportal.org/publications/country-reports.html). For the first time in many years, the IPA Council voted to increase the annual membership fees for country members. In addition, the regional and international permafrost conference organisers are now required to provide a percentage of registration fees to the parent organisation. Taken together, these important decisions will allow funding of the Action Groups and thus lead to seed financial support for international collaborative permafrost science and engineering projects. In total, these are big changes for a relatively young organisation but they were viewed as necessary to meet the level of expectations that now appears in the international science community. Thanks to the involvement of past IPA presidents, ECs, Council members, Working Party members and all individuals who devoted their energy to the progress of permafrost research, permafrost is now widely acknowledged as a highly significant part of Earth system science. The IPA, through its activities and networks, has been instrumental in supporting that prominence, but it needed to modernise its structure to liberate additional support for its well-regarded activities. We trust that these changes will contribute to strengthen the visibility of the IPA and permafrost science and engineering as a whole. The next milestone for the IPA will be the Tenth International Conference on Permafrost to be held in June 2012 in Salekhard, Russia, by which time most of these changes will have been fully implemented.